Mr. C. C. Babington on British Plants. 269 



■K<rf£{ 



by myself in Cumberland they appear to have been erect, but it t^^ 



is difficult to determine from a dried specimen ; they are figured ,,,^ 



and described by Reichenbach as erect ; Fries states that they 



nod, and his specimen seems to confirm him. The fruit of this 



plant difi"ers from that of T. minus and T. flexuosum in being 



scarcely at all compressed and very regularly oval in its outline. 3^37^ Mut 



I have only seen this plant from the Lake district of the nortly f/<^/'*'^ 

 of England, where it is found in damp situations, si^h as Brathay 

 near Ambleside, and St. John's Vale near KeswickT Mr. J. Ball ' ^ /y^3 

 appears (Bot. Gaz. i. 313) to have found it " abundantly on the ^Vv 

 shores of the lakes .... of the limestone districts of the west of 

 Ireland," for I presume that this is the plant which he there calls 

 T. majus. 



The locality in Somersetshire/recorded for this species in my JcImUom' 

 ' Manual ' (ed. 3. 4) belongs to T. flexuosum. 



2. POLYGALA. 



The discovery of Polygala uliginosa of Reichenbach, a pro- 

 bable variety of P. austriaca of Crantz, upon the elevated moun- 

 tain limestone of Teesdale by my valued friends Messrs. James 

 Backhouse, sen. and jun., has led me to a more careful exami- 

 nation of the plants referable to that genus that are natives of 

 Britain, and as I have considerably altered the technical cha- 

 racters of P. vulgaris and P. calcarea from those given in the 

 third edition of my ' Manual ' (p. 38 & 39), it seems desirable 

 to give the new specific definitions of them in conjunction with 

 that of P. austriaca. Much difficulty attends all the supposed 

 species of Polygala, and probably their number will ultimately 

 be much reduced, but we are not as yet in a position to do so 

 satisfactorily. 



It will be seen that attention should be especially paid to the 

 mode in which the leaves are arranged, and to the appearances 

 caused by the different lengths to which the stems extend each 

 year. In some cases the leaves are pretty regularly scattered 

 over the stems ; in others some are scattered, but the larger ones 

 are collected into a marked tuft arranged in the form of a rose 

 at the end of the growth of the year. When this extension is 

 slight, the rosette appears to be radical and includes all the 

 fohage of the true stem, as is the case in P. austriaca ; when it 

 is elongated its lower part bears small scattered leaves, and the 

 rosette of larger ones is placed at its extremity, a habit presented 

 by P. calcarea. In P. vulgaris a third condition is seen, where 

 there is no marked distinction between the persistent part of the 

 stem and the deciduous floral portion. The stems of P. vulgaris 

 seem usually to die back nearly to the crown of the root, so as 

 to leave only two or three of the lowest buds to produce the 



